The Effect of Peer Assessment Rubrics on Learners' Satisfaction and Performance Within a Blended MOOC Environment

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have a remarkable ability to expand access to a large scale of participants worldwide, beyond the formality of the higher education systems. MOOCs support participants to be actively involved in collaborative learning and construct their own learning experience in a variety of domains. However, one of the biggest challenges facing MOOCs is how to assess the learners’ performance in a massive learning environment beyond traditional automated assessment methods. To address this challenge, peer assessment has been proposed as an effective assessment method in MOOCs. The problem is, however, how to ensure the quality of the peer assessment in terms of validity and reliability. Moreover, assessment in blended MOOCs (bMOOCs) introduces unique challenges regarding the best peer assessment model in a learning environment that brings together face-toface interactions and online activities. This paper presents the details of a study conducted to investigate peer assessment in bMOOCs. The study results show that flexible rubrics have the potential to make the feedback process more accurate, credible, transparent, valid, and reliable, thus ensuring the quality of the peer assessment task.